The approaches described in this section could be pursued, but are not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
In local area networks, internetworks and networking infrastructure such as packet routers and switches, Network Address Translation (NAT) is used to remap a given Internet Protocol (IP) address into a different IP address and/or port number. Typically, remapping comprises modifying the IP address in the packet header of a datagram while the datagram is in transit across a network. NAT may be used, for example, to share a single public IP address to represent an entire private network to external systems without revealing the local IP addresses used within the private network.
However, establishing and maintaining connections that are based on an offer/answer protocol are challenging when NAT is involved. While many solutions have been proposed, each has limitations or weaknesses. Additional solutions are needed.